Author: Graham Russell

By any given measure, Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz HD is a reclamation project of sorts. Banana Blitz wasn’t a particularly well-received entry at the time, and the intervening years have not seen a late fandom grow around it. So why is it, of all the Super Monkey Ball games, getting a remaster? One potential reason is that decision-makers at Sega thought it had an undiscovered appeal buried under its early motion controls and lack of development focus.

In most instances, a retro re-release project is about capitalizing on nostalgia. It’s about letting players revisit old favorites on new platforms, and the comfort of the known being preserved for future play. And Sega’s no stranger to that, both with this Sega Ages series and its compilation efforts in general. At least for those of us in the West, though, Sega Ages Ichidant-R is different. It’s an unknown artifact delivered to an audience to let them learn more, and it’s exactly the sort of effort that fans of Japanese games should applaud.

Nihon Falcom’s The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel III is both a continuation and a new chapter. It’s not a fresh start for Rean Schwarzer and company, but it’s a clear inflection point, with a shifting status quo and a new cast of characters. At its core, though, it’s still very much the games that came before it. And for longtime fans of the franchise, a new coat of paint over the same structures is probably just fine.

If you’re alive and on this planet, it’s likely that you’ve played at least one Mario Kart game. So a beginner’s guide may seem a bit strange! Still, there’s room for everyone to explore further into the excellent series, and we’re here to help.

The GameCube is a lovable little system, and with good reason: it’s loaded with fun games that hold up well after years of more technically advanced releases! Its import scene is equally endearing, with silly entries that focus on simple fun. Let’s check out the best of the bunch!

For a less-successful-than-hoped system now reaching two decades of existence, the Dreamcast holds an impressive library of games that just haven’t seen proper follow-ups, and that holds true with the unlocalized segment of its library. The end of the road for Sega’s hardware development was full of both special novelties and Japan-only genre specialties, and the system’s arcade-like approach means a lot of it’s totally playable for Western audiences. Here’s what you shouldn’t miss!

Hey, Jikkyou Powerful Pro Baseball‘s out on the Nintendo Switch in Japan! It’s a shame that the Power Pros franchise hasn’t made it back to the West in more than a decade, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get it from Japan and have fun anyway. Watch!